Overlapping labour markets

Overlapping labour markets arise when some types of workers do not meet employers with some types of jobs. For example, skilled workers could seek high-skill or low-skill jobs, but low skill workers could be limited to low-skill jobs. The paper derives conditions for equilibrium and efficiency, distinguishes reducible from irreducible overlapping labour markets, and describes distributional impacts of proportional demand shifts and technological change. Many labour models incorporate the structure of overlapping labour markets, so that the results have widespread applicability.